On a secluded bluff overlooking a rocky beach in Maine, a lavender-colored Victorian house holds a century’s worth of secrets. Author J. Courtney Sullivan is no stranger to that New England coastline, having penned a novel titled Maine back in 2011.
This time, the overall setting — and the house, in particular — guides her new novel, The Cliffs, which is about one woman’s rocky journey toward self-discovery.
Our main character is Jane Flanagan, a woman from the fictional seaside resort town of Awadapquit who discovers the abandoned Victorian as a teenager and uses it as her personal retreat. She goes there to read, to look out over the ocean, or just to escape her alcoholic mother.
Decades later, Jane, now an archivist for a Harvard library, returns home to discover that a Boston power couple has bought the old house and is transforming it, HGTV-style, into their summer residence.
The wife, Genevieve, has made some questionable and possibly even dangerous choices along the way, and she is convinced the house is haunted. She hires Jane to research the home’s previous inhabitants, and what she uncovers is a complex story of love, loss, and a long history of colonialism.
Sullivan's research shines in this, her sixth novel, as she writes commandingly about the region’s complicated history, particularly when it comes to Indigenous people.
This isn’t a ghost story, per se, but the characters dig up and deal with the ghosts of their past. It’s also much more than a typical summer beach novel. It’s sad, and hopeful, and an overall terrific read.
